System a farce, Andrew

Date: January 20 2013

Anson Cameron

IF YOU live in a land where defeat can be valued higher than victory, but the manufacture and sale of it is a crime, then a black market similar to the one for heroin, crystal meth and sex will grow. Loss will be peddled like drugs, covertly with nods, winks and codes, backmen will be played forward, midfielders left untagged. This is the land Andrew Demetriou ruled over. It's a land where men who grew up believing every conceivable effort must be given over to Victory had to come to terms with the fact that suddenly, disconcertingly, Defeat was more valuable, and was their duty. It must have hurt these men to plan for Defeat. But the AFL had put a high price on a dark substance. No wonder Andrew didn't admit this land existed.

If defeat had no value, there would be no suggestion Chris Connelly and Dean Bailey and other Demons had conspired to bring it about. And what value did it have? Possible ultimate victory. Which is not in any way comparable to the humdrum, workaday victory on offer against Richmond in round 18 of a dead and dispiriting season.

In Andrew's world things were set up so purposeful defeat might lead to Ultimate Victory. Which sounds … wrong … purposeful defeat paying off. And bad. So let's not admit it happens. Or people will track the practice to its cause and that cause will look a hell of a lot like … us. The AFL.

Was no one at the AFL meeting that gave rise to priority picks for a stated number of losses per season brave enough to sully the head man's pristine conception of humanity by suggesting, in an entirely jocular way of course, so as not to be retrenched on moral grounds, 'Hell, Boss, even I'd be tempted to drop a dead rubber to get the next Buddy and Pendles'? There were whispers about Collingwood, shouts about Carlton. And people mention West Coast. But does it matter who threw what game? If Chris Connolly and Dean Bailey avoided victory on any given match day, it was only to postpone it in order that they increase its worth exponentially on a later day - a grand final day some years hence. Isn't that an honourable pursuit of meaningful victory?

As for the people who might have lost money betting on games of football no one wanted to win, only Pollyanna punters who, like Andrew, were denying the stone cold likelihood of deliberate loss risked being stung. That is, stupid people might have lost money. So what? I know a man who blew his big toe off while giving a lecture on gun safety. It's as well to remember you're betting on men's hearts and minds as well as their lungs and legs when you take a punt on them. And if you think you can read the market on men's hearts and minds then lay your money down. But don't whinge at the singe.

It's an unjust distraction to blame the minions at Melbourne for the tanking farce. The AFL rewarded Loss. What did it expect to happen when it decided to make lottery winners of losers? Not many of us don't believe Chris and Dean bought the Golden Ticket Andrew Demetriou was selling. Hopefully Irish Jim was part of the understanding. If so I honour him for being smart enough to realise the vanquishing of another also-ran at season's arse-end doesn't matter as much as the two young guns who might help deliver that one future day of deathless success.

The great generals have always understood tactical retreat as a way of winning a larger war. One gives ground here so that one may wait for reinforcements, more favourable terrain, lengthen the enemy's supply lines. Just ask the Russians about the salutary effect of Loss.

Tanking, if two priority picks are on offer, two of the best young players in the land, is no more than tactical retreat, totally honourable, and far wiser than charging the heights while outgunned. It's no more than kicking the ball backward to go across the ground and forward up the other wing. Win some battles and you lose the war.

So Andrew Demetriou ran a system where, sometimes, for some clubs, winning was losing and losing was winning. We all saw the desirability of loss. And we all saw something that looked very like that desire's consummation. Except Andrew, who, like Monty Python's Black Knight, with all limbs severed insisted ''Tis but a scratch''. Andrew's not dumb. But to admit tanking was taking place was to admit that in his league good, honourable men found themselves in a position in which defeat was crucially important.

Makes for an ugly workplace, that.

And now we have this farce in which these good men are being forced to tell lies to investigators about things they once did.

Investigators in the pay of the man who presided over the environment that led them, inevitably, to do those things. With this AFL examination of an episode all of us already know from knowing the world, we have to listen to the depressing he-said/she-said as guys who want to save their livelihoods squirm before Andrew's detectives. Is any part of what Chris Connolly or Dean Bailey said to apparatchik X, Y or Z on the 10th of whenever even remotely interesting? The truth is, they were dealers in a suddenly valuable substance called Loss and now are scapegoats for the fact Loss had a value. My greatest wish is that Chris Connolly fronts the show and calls their bluff. Throws down his hand and looks up at Judge Andrew and says, ''Here's what I did, Andrew. I tried to buy the future at the going rate. And the going rate was Loss. And you were the seller.''

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